At least two large fires that appear to be uncontrolled are visible at the Tesoro Refinery, Anacortes, Washington. No further information is available at this time. The Tesoro website does not say anything about the fires yet.

The fires are currently towering above the tank farm. There are at least two major flames visible from several miles away. One of the fires is sending up a column of thick black smoke. The other flares up above the tank farm and then subsides before flaring up again. The refinery spokesman’s telephone number says to leave a message. Nothing seen so far at the Seattle Post Intelligencer, FoxNews, etc.

“Just cycled through all of the local channels up here. There isnt a peep on ANY channel. If there was a big fire at the refinery, SOMEONE would say something, dont you think?”

Yes, but no one seems to know anything about it. The spokesman for the refinery has a recorded message saying to leave a message. The Anacortes Police department says they have no information they can give out, and contact the Tesoro refinery.

Nonetheless, there are two fires ablaze that are sending up flames up to double the height of the tanks in the tank farm. Go figure....

I live just a couple of miles across the water from Tesoro. I noticed the smoke but none of their alarm sirens have gone off. You can easily hear those for 15-20 miles. That refinery was built in the mid-50s as a Shell refinery.

About two or two and a half hours later the fires have been greatly reduced now. There is still an occasional flareup with a flame rising up from behind one of the large green storage tanks. Otherwise there are at least two small columns of white smoke coming from the principal sites of the fires.

The reporting in that article appears to be seriously underplaying the scope of the incident. This event was considerably more than just an exceptional amount of flaring. There were multiple fires underway in separate areas. One of the fires was either atop a storage tank or coming up from behind the storage tank some tens of feet into the air above the storage tank.

Ran my boat on the ethanol variety for 2 years and had to do a major overhaul of the fuel system and carburetor. They recommend the additive, so I’ll let you know in 2 years if it’s any better. It’s hard to find the no lead except at major river/lake docks. More expensive but probably the better choice.

27
posted on 07/17/2014 4:23:13 AM PDT
by xzins
( Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who truly support our troops pray for victory!)

Understood, we have a family member who works at the neighboring refinery. The local news report described the fire as an “unplanned fire event,” which is a rather tongue-in-cheek understatement in itself given how there were multiple fires underway for awhile, and they were large enough to tower over the tank farm in at least two locations with what appeared to be other smaller fires in between and around the larger two flames. Two and a half hours later one of the two major sources still flared up from time to time atop or behind one of the storage tanks, while the other fires appeared to have been brought under control and were venting. So, this event appeared to be something considerably more than just some flame and flare from one of the nozzles or vents in a planned unit restart gone awry.

You need to understand that emergency flares are designed to be on fire when needed.

Say you have a vessel designed for a particular pressure of a flammable gas. If the pressure gets too high (for whatever reason due to process or control issues), the alternatives are to let the vessel explode (bad), let explosive gasses loose (potential for explosion if an ignition source is contacted), or to purposely burn the gas off (flare).

These types of fires are not pleasant as they represent lost product ($), and environmental regulation hassles, but they are preferable to the alternatives.

I worked at that refinery in 1980 but then it was owned by Texaco and they filmed several Bob “for Texaco” Hope commercials there.

It was old then and we were there to replace and repair damage that was done by an explosion in the catalyst cracker. The enviroweenies have got this country by the balls and will stop every effort to employ new technology and build modern refineries. That is why we continue to see these problems...

We do understand that having had the safety training and witnessing prior incidents in which workers were killed at these two refineries. In a few hours we may learn more details about what happened. Understand, the posted picture is what the scene looked like about 2 and a half hours after the fires started at about 6PM. By the time the picture was taken most of the flame and smoke had been subdued. The flames were much larger than what is pictured later, and one of the other sources of the flames was in the vicinity of the vapor-smoke column seen to the left of the flame above the storage tank. Although it was difficult to see the small details, it looked as though there were smaller fires near ground level between those locations.

I don’t want to exagerrate the extent of the incident, but it was large enough and impressive enough to attract a large crowd of onlookers because of the unusual size of the fires and smoke columns and number of them which did not appear to be coming from the usual flare stacks. Later today there will likely be some further information about what happened.

You’ve got the wrong refinery. The refinery on fire yesterday is the current Tesoro Refinery, which is the former Shell Refinery before the Texaco Refinery was sold to Shell due to FTC rules when Chevron merged with Texaco. In other words, Shell swapped refineries, and this is Shell’s forme refinery, the one with the green tankage. The former Texaco Refinery (Texaco, Equilon, Puget Sound Refinery, et al), now the Shell refinery, is outside the picture frame to the right.

Yeah, the “enviroweenies” are throwing a hissy fit here in opposition to the cargo trains hauling in the Bakken oil. The plant managers are currently trying to increase the railroad facilities to handle more tank cars, but they are being opposed by people who are equating the oil tank car trains to death trains being rolling bombs in their communities.

Two and a half hours later one of the two major sources still flared up from time to time atop or behind one of the storage tanks, while the other fires appeared to have been brought under control and were venting. So, this event appeared to be something considerably more than just some flame and flare from one of the nozzles or vents in a planned unit restart gone awry.

You have more info of this event than I do so I could be way off base. But judging just from your descriptions, and the picture, and my experience in plants, that is flares.

I would say it was certainly not planned based upon your description, but a reaction to something gone wrong and multiple processes had to go to emergency flares. Look again at the last photo, there are 5 flares in emergency condition. It might take several hours for those to balance out the mass flow before they could shut down.

Yes, and it would also fit into the report there was supposed to be no damage sufficient to interfere with plant operations. Wait till the next safety meeting at the plant.... No doubt there will be a few things said at that meeting.

Normally I would have had one of my good cameras with a long zoom lens with me at 6PM, but left them behind that time to go to the Framer’s Market for just a few minutes. The pictures of the fires would have been impressive and memorable.

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